46. Still with a couple of dogs left in me, if I’m lucky. The trouble with putting titles on things. Smiles. The striking of a match. Of late, I have been able to luxuriate in an ability lost to me for some years. I’m once again finding unbounded joy in the infinite, and not a moment too soon. On my walk back from the shops, this morning, I stopped at the Boundary Hotel to get a coffee. Fell into a wonderful little conversation with Kara—the barista. Covid19 restrictions are still in place, of course, so it’s just a takeaway. But more than ever it’s nice to give back to the things you appreciate having around, like your local pub. I say more than ever because I’m someone who has a philanthropically spendthrift nature, anyway. Meaning I intuitively found my way to the philosophy that it was best to distribute money rather than hoard it. Especially to your local community. I’ll die as poor as a bony-arsed horse because of it. Rightly so. And, in keeping with that theme, after I left the Boundary, I began to mentally formulate my last will & testament. I don’t have anything to leave my kids; my estate is comprised of words alone. Let’s work with that then, thought I. It went something like this: Don’t be a cheap bastard. Tip everyone, often excessively. Even when tipping is not called for. Take this philosophy into all walks of life. Except for shirts. Buy shirts dirt-cheap wherever, whenever you can. All types. Eat in pubs—fatty steaks, beer & chips. Make that a staple of the diet. Never own a car. Read Down And Out In Paris And London so you’ll know how to manage your finances. Read everything by Henry Miller to fill in the rest. When I got home I decided to make a snack. Cut my finger while slicing some tomatoes. The blood was oily rich at its tip. Looked to me like youth. Better days. A rock ‘n’ roll soundtrack to a train journey through India or Mexico. Like Bat Out Of Hell played over The Darjeeling Limited or some shit like that. I’m spending a lot more time in the kitchen, too. Standing on borrowed bones, cooking, reading the letters of Van Gogh. Sometimes I cook roast potatoes at 1:12 am and think a lot about him. For a moment I intuit that I have a job to do somewhere, sometime. Work. I shudder. Boof the cat meows. I look over my shoulder. He’s cleaning his arsehole. I’m glad I don’t have that job. For his bunghole or mine. I put a band-aid on my finger. I think about lighting the oven to cook something else. I dwell. Time is poured into a singing wine glass. Again, the striking of a match comes to me. Smiles. The poetry of luxuriating in love. Just don’t linger too long in there, like Proust. It’s the work of a moment or an hour, not years. Change out your bathwater, for god’s sake, man! I momentarily abort lunch and put on a movie, Lawless. What more could I want: screenplay by Nick Cave, starring Tom Hardy, Jessica Chastain… Redheads - Three Different Kinds. That could be a title. Yes, alright, let’s get it out of the way up front. There’s the trifecta: makes sense, I have a mildly insane infatuation with Jessica Chastain. And, yes, that extends to most redheaded females. So, back to the trouble with titles. Correct weight: Van Gogh, Jessica, and Redheads Safety Matches. I’m back in front of the oven again. It’s staring me in the face. The gas igniter is on the fritz. Requiring me to squat and reach into the rear of the cavity to light the burner. It’s somewhat of a balancing act, one that I’m in no way best suited to. It may one day result in my suicide by mistake. Probably on a Tuesday. Never mind. Many fine writers have gone out by their own hand. I think most of them did so deliberately, but still. That aside, the lighting process is nigh on impossible without an ignition instrument of significant length. For this, I most happily choose Redheads Extra Long Safety Matches. I could go with a lighter gun, but that would involve me missing out on everything good in life—that tactile process of striking the match and the wondrously sensual experience of hearing the scratching of the match-head on the striker, the moments of ignition and combustion, and that heavenly whiff of their ghosting smoke as it meanders up and in and past my nostrils. Glorious! I’ve often said I’d happily be a cigarette smoker if the whole process constituted the lineaments of those gorgeous ignition smells. Alas, that’s the only part I enjoy, which, curiously enough, doesn’t seem a decent enough trade-off for cancer, heart disease, stroke, etc. But yes, I’ve been going dizzily around and around in these small stories, these moments. It’s the stuff of rapture. The bible and the myths are such wildly fecund platforms to art for that very reason: they can be recycled, they’re small. Making their potential boundless. Our mistake is that we don’t take the simple route through this knowledge. Stay with the poem, the song. Blake died singing. Go around and around in that. Which reminds me, first amendment to the will: When dying on a Tuesday you need to spice it up a bit, show some panache. Otherwise, the day will simply eat you up as a boring footnote. It’s different from dying on say a Saturday when people have a little electricity in their blood. You can get away with something pedestrian on those days.